


Is it time to wake up?

by LyricEquivocal



Category: Bright (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Forbidden Love, Kandilah, Minor Original Character(s), Prequel, The Dark Lord (Bright)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 23:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricEquivocal/pseuds/LyricEquivocal
Summary: The thing about the Inferni? They didn't have to run. They didn't have to run, because they could hide. And yet, she ran. She ran for years.Everyone has a history, even if they don't talk about it. Especially if they don't talk about it.(Rating subject to change. AKA it will change.)





	Is it time to wake up?

**Author's Note:**

> Just gonna put this out there: The entire prompt for this came to me when I thought "How exactly do you know what Leilah smells like, Kandomere?" 
> 
> Beta'd by my first mate on this ship: Libby! We're not perfect, so apologies for any mistakes, also there are a lot of liberties taken with filling in the holes left in the world pertaining to magic and brights. 
> 
> I do have plans to continue this, but let me know if I'm totally off base or not!

The thing about the Inferni? They didn't have to run. They didn't have to run, because they could hide. There was nothing that signaled them out any more than any other elf. They looked the same, spoke the same, and for the most part could blend in just fine with Elvish society on the whole. Their beliefs had always been practiced in private, and they didn't actively recruit. Most Inferni, almost all of them, were well installed in positions that would afford them the best chance of bringing the Dark Lord back. Most in places where they had chance to hear about magic weapons, archaeologists, curators, antiquities dealers, experts in their fields. If you were going to find a wand before the Magic Task Force? You had to be someone respectable, in the case of curators or dealers. Someone out looking for them, in the case of archaeologists. And for those covens who had magical artifacts at their disposal? They didn't have to run for entirely other reasons.

Not just wands. Chalices, medallions, athames. Magical artifacts were varied, and most not as restricted as wands. They were taken when they were misused, but if one was careful with magic, hardly anyone knew you were even using it. The issue with the Wands? The powerful ones? They were....for lack of a better term weapons of mass destruction. There were few left, and for a coven who had one, Leilah did things no Inferni coven would have ever done. She ran. She ran for years. A wand would have provided more than enough protection, she was trained in its use from a young age, she was adept with her gifts. And yet, she ran. 

There were those in other covens, who questioned this behavior, privately. Why would she cower in the shadows when she could just as well cause enough destruction to disappear in the aftermath, find safe haven, and regroup? The Magic Task Force did not use their confiscated weapons. Hadn't once in their entire history. The protective items, possibly. Not the offensive ones. Never those.

It made for a very unbalanced fight. An easy one. 

Yet she ran.

Of course her people looked at her sideways, too, though none of her coven dared question her decisions. She was high priestess, she was their connection to their Lord. She heard his voice, and had felt his hand upon her.

The answer to the question of "Why?" was simple, though incomprehensible to her fellows, it was because of who was chasing her. It never occurred to them that their leader would hesitate to kill a non Inferni. Never crossed their minds that she would have reason to hesitate. They never realized that they were being deceived, in a way.

The biggest issue with running? Was that it encouraged being chased. The key to being on the run was and has always been: walk don't run. If you run, then someone's going to chase you. 

And chase he did.

——  
San Francisco - Derelict Industrial Park - 2015

This operation had been in planning for almost a full week, it had been decided well above Kandomere's head that it was time to make a strike against the Inferni coven that had been roving around the California coast for the last several years. The top brass felt they had significant enough intelligence that there was a wand in play. Though there had not been direct confirmation yet. In Kandomere's opinion, they were mostly rumors, contacts in the magic underworld whispering about the Coven Leader, and her enemies disappearing. 

He didn't doubt the intelligence, he just felt that striking was premature. If they overplayed their hand, it wasn't inconceivable that the entire Coven would vanish into the ether and take years to resurface. Kandomere's objections were soundly ignored, and so the planning of the strike mission had continued ahead. He had done his best to minimize the risk, opting to strike when the fewest possible coven members were in attendance, because the possibility of a very large scale incident with a raid on a magic wielding foe?

It wasn't possible, it was likely. The last time a raid like this had been conducted? Several city blocks of Amsterdam had been reclaimed by the water. They of course had rebuilt, but the city was still scarred by the incident. The coven had been destroyed, as well as the team sent on the raid, but countless innocents had died. Thirty years ago now, it had been the worst magical terror attack of the eighties.

So to say he was nervous as he watched the tactical team suit up? Understatement of the century.

"Be safe in there, there hasn't been movement inside in hours, and we have confirmation of no heat signatures inside, but that could be false reporting, if magic is involved." He managed to sound matter of fact, confident in his team without betraying his nervousness, though his partner looking at him in the communications van told him that he didn't keep it out of his face. The team confirmed their receipt of the information and proceeded with the final check of weapons and status, before entering the building.

The building itself was a three story abandoned industrial building in the Bay Area, a support building for the larger factory complex that had been shuttered since sometime in the early eighties. Parts of the parcel had been bought and were being rebuilt, but a large portion of the complex was still abandoned and decaying. It seemed out of character for a coven house, but Leilah had been traversing the western seaboard for the past twenty years, she was bound to have some strange hideouts.

The breech went well, and the team proceeded to clear the large space, still cluttered with decaying industrial detritus, leaving a maze that had to be traversed and cleared. The space offered warrens and hiding spaces to any who knew the layout well, and dead ends and confusion for those who were interlopers on the coven's territory. Which the Magic task force definitely was. Kandomere had been bracing for the shout that came through the radio. Nothing, however, could stop the cool ice of dread which slid down his spine when it did come. 

Things had just gone sideways in a bad way.

“Contact!” The Sabertooth leader shouted over the radio, before the retorts of gunfire sounded in Doppler. Over the radio and a second later echoing through the building. Kandomere tensed, a muscle in his neck betraying his concern. The mobile command center was hardly spacious, but he had to resist the very human gesture of snatching the headset off of his radio tech and recalling them. It wouldn’t matter, they would almost certainly all die. They would die quickly, but horribly. Leilah was not known for her mercy, especially when it came to being attacked.

“Magic in play—!!!” 

“She’s here! Primary tar--”

It wasn’t long before there was nothing but silence.

The initiates? They could have taken easily, they were cannon fodder for the Inferni covens, guards, financial support, caretakers, believers but with no more power beyond elven agility and strength. The acolytes? The lesser magic users? They would be more difficult, but they could take one, maybe two down at once. They tended to specialize in personal magic, the type that would enhance their fighting, or give them an edge. Leilah, though? She would prove impossible to take. Kandomere had never seen a Bright that was her equal, not to say that there wasn’t one, but he’d never seen one. Easily the most powerful known Bright on the west coast. She was lethal even without her wand, and had an impressive command of personal magics. 

Magic wasn’t all channeled through tools, the powerful Brights could do active magic without them. Magical tools amplified the power of the user, and he’d seen what Leilah could do without any amplification at all first hand. She had been wounded before, severely, and had healed her own wounds. 

“We need to clear the building, collect our fallen, call it in.” He said after the silence had stretched on toward several minutes. He had gotten those men killed, and he wouldn't forgive himself for it for a long while. It was only proper that he assist in collecting their bodies for transport. No one even thought it odd that he offered to do this in a three piece, bespoke, suit. He was an elf. He could handle himself in whatever clothes he was wearing. He didn't need to say anything more, the van started and headed closer to where the team had breached the building.

Inside the path of destruction trailed through the first floor, and Kandomere moved through with elvish speed and efficiency, leaving his human colleagues behind rather rapidly. If he didn’t pay attention to his movements, he did end up doing things like that, it was part of being an elf. It didn't help that he was very distracted, guilt ridden, for more than one reason.

He was alone when he smelled it.

Smelled her.

It hit him like a physical blow, stealing his breath for a moment. He tightened his grip on his service pistol, and braced his shoulders before he walked further, following her scent. Leilah smelled so much softer than her acts proved her to be, the light smell of her skin reminded Kandomere of a flower that was too delicate to touch. One brush of a finger and the petals would disintegrate. Delicate she was not, he doubted she could shatter. 

Kandomere said nothing as he moved, well aware that he was wearing a radio with a live channel to his team. His voice would betray him beyond his position in the building. He had made his career on hunting Brights in general, and her specifically, but it had been years since he had seen her in person. He’d also made his career by keeping his past to himself. Thanks to his taciturn nature? No one would ever believe that he knew what Leilah smelled like, that he knew what she looked like when she slept. No one would ever believe it, and he needed to keep it that way.

She was waiting for him, at a window on the opposite end of the building from where the team had entered. Her back was against the glass, leaning casually, ankles crossed. The only real sign that she'd killed an entire team of his agents was the dust that clung to her coat, the windswept look of her white blonde hair. That and the wand at her side, though it was dark, which meant she had no intent to use it. Wands lit when you wanted to use them, because they too wanted to be used. They were not quite sentient, but they had a will, a quiet, seductive will. 

He saw her reaction mirror his when she finally saw him, a small release of breath, a check for physical damages, eyes flitting over the other’s form. He kept his gun trained on her, as he looked her over. She hadn’t changed much in appearance, she was still the icy beauty he had first laid eyes on, but her eyes were almost unrecognizable, so much colder than he remembered. 

“Act like your enemy, become your enemy?” She asked with an arched brow and the faintest hint of a smile at the gun in Kandomere’s hands, her lightly accented elvish breaking the silence between them. He had a moment to decide before he removed one hand from the grip of his pistol and crushed the small radio receiver clipped to his belt and dropped it to the floor. If he talked, he’d bring the entire remains of the team here, and she’d kill them all. He wasn't about to lose anyone else today, there had been enough death.

“Well, I am quite under armed for this confrontation, and you have an easier weapon to draw, I’m being cautious.” He replied in Elvish, with a pointed glance at the wand in her hand, and tilted his head in a small gesture as if to say 'You're one to talk'. Her eyes flicked to the wand in her hand, and her lips pulled up at the corners in a small, but honest smile. She took a beat to decide, but the weapon disappeared into her jacket, likely into a specially tailored pocket.

“Better?” She asked, holding up empty hands, slowly walking across the room towards him, palms facing him in a mockery of the pose of surrender. He knew better, but if she’d meant him harm, he’d have already been dead. By the time she’d made it halfway across the space to him, he’d holstered his weapon, but he hadn’t really relaxed. She was dangerous, but her presence had stirred a deep well in him. Old memories threatened to drown the recent past.

Leilah, on the other hand walked with the ease of a cat, utterly unconcerned with the situation at hand. She didn't seem particularly bothered that the Magic Task Force had her in their sights, that they had raided one of her safe houses. She didn't stop walking until she was looking up the few inches of height difference between them. She favored heels now, closing the six inch difference in their heights. One of her empty palms gently caressed the edge of his jaw, while the other brushed his long hair behind one of his pointed ears.

She was utterly silent while she did this, her eyes thawing from the cold thing that looked like Leilah, but couldn't actually be her, to something pained and nostalgic. It aged her. She still looked so very pained when she whispered, "Dream of me." Right before she put a hand to his chest, with a flare of wind and ethereal blue light in her eyes, and he flew the seven or so feet back to hit the wall with enough force to rattle the wall and echo through the whole building. She watched him crumple to the floor, before making a hasty escape through the newly broken window to the street, and the sewers below that.   
——

Leilah had once upon a time-- Isn't that how all fairy tales start? -- feared the path that she was going to have to tread. She had longed for something else, a sweetness that she only had in her dreams that the Dark Lord did not share with her. She ran, once upon a time, just as her sister would do much later. She ran to the uninitiated, the neutral camp. She wanted nothing to do with it, the war between the Inferni and the Shield of Light. She longed for freedom, where no one would look to her. Not as one of the more powerful Brights in the last few generations, not for the quiet whispers the Dark Lord shared with her, not the feel of him in her head, as if her body was not just hers. Nor as an enemy to be destroyed, as a villain, something to be hated, someone to revel in destruction.

She had been young once, too. It is the nature of children to want something other than what their parents prescribe for them, what their society tells them they should do or be. Rebellion is a universal concept, after all. A virgin priestess was her fate. The one who would bring the Dark Lord back, who would be taken as his lover. 

Leilah would not be taken so easy. So she ran. Ran to the world outside their isolated little island of society, where they hid their Brights away from the world, let them practice and hone their craft relatively safe from the threat of being discovered and marked as Brights. Where they were free to practice their religion away from prying eyes.

What she had found? Had almost convinced her to stay away. Kindness, sincerity, and unconditional companionship.


End file.
